WeTried Translations

Translator: Hydrogen B

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◈ Omniscient First-Person's Viewpoint

Chapter 381

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Interlude: After the Sky God Comes the Progenitor

There were several reasons Shei had started dressing as a man.

The first was to land safely in Tantalus for this cycle. She hadn't known the exact trigger needed to reach it, so she'd had to get herself arrested by the military state and thrown in. But willingly disarming and letting herself be captured would have been foolish. So she chose to draw out someone with the authority to make it happen and get herself thrown in that way.

That someone was the Absolute Sonata, Partlaxion. A knight of the old kingdom and the military state's northern commander, a man who revered the art of the duel. Shei had cut down the military state's soldiers one by one, provoking him into action, and he came running to duel her.

That was all she needed. Partlaxion loved dueling but had no interest in taking lives or property from it. Fight him for a while, let slip that she wanted to face the strong ones in Tantalus, and he'd laugh and personally throw her in himself. The only complication was that he had a daughter around Shei's age, which would have made the whole process awkward without the disguise. Men like him go soft around girls who could be their daughters.

The second reason was more fundamental: Shei simply found it easier dressed as a man.

This was a world where Chosen Prophets and Holy Maidens openly existed. A regressor like Shei, acting as though she knew the future, would naturally invite the suspicion that she was a Holy Maiden. Perhaps it wasn't entirely a misunderstanding, but that identity was far from ideal for someone who needed to dig into all manner of secrets. To avoid being tracked, or to keep people from raising their guard, Shei had made a habit of changing her appearance and her clothes.

The Mask of Agartha had been for exactly that.

A treasure obtained from the savage lands far to the south, where countless tribes were scattered in every direction. Wearing it let her change the impression she gave others without any particular effort, and so Shei had swapped identities often.

But the Mask of Agartha wasn't all-powerful. At the end of the day it planted an impression, made people believe, yet that was all it did. A matter of perception and belief. When things became as plainly obvious as they were right now, it was useless.

Bad timing, worst possible audience. Shei pulled her torn collar closed and opened her mouth.

"No. This is..."

"It's all right, Shei. You don't need to explain."

Remarkably, the one who brushed it aside first was Tyrkanzyaka. She tilted her parasol lower and let out a small sigh.

"So that was why your blood tasted so good. There were a few other things that had seemed off, and this clears most of them up."

"Wait, you're fine with it?"

"I'll admit it's a little disconcerting, but what does it change? A man being attracted to a man makes no sense. A woman disguised as a man is far more plausible."

"That part is a genuine misunderstanding!"

"A misunderstanding? If liking men is a misunderstanding, then you prefer women? Does that mean the way you were friendly with me and the princess and the Thunder Lord was..."

"No, no, no! That's not what I meant!"

Even as she scrambled to explain, Shei felt relief. Tyrkanzyaka was taking the whole thing in stride, as though it were a minor episode not worth fussing over. She wasn't the kind of person whose feelings shifted wildly, and it was hard to imagine her changing her attitude here.

Hilde spoke up.

"You're a little behind the times! These days, men with men, women with women, couples come in all kinds! If anything, the disguise is the stranger part!"

"...? But then they cannot have children, can they?"

"We shouldn't get hung up on little things like that! Love isn't only for making children, is it?"

"That's also true. Even vampires have feelings of affection.... Hmm, though this doesn't seem like the right moment for that conversation."

Mid-sentence, Tyrkanzyaka cut herself off and gave Hilde a tired look.

"It would be rather pathetic if I moved exactly as you intended. Did you think one word from you would flip my attitude on its head?"

"Oh my. This is a little unexpected."

"The blood sea does not ripple at such light provocation. Being fooled by clever words and swaying this way and that, I gave up that kind of foolishness more than a thousand years ago."

Vampires were already not the most sensitive of creatures, but a person who had lived a thousand years was dull beyond mere insensitivity. It wasn't simply a matter of feeling. It was a matter of everything they had lived through and accumulated.

"I know what it looks like. The arrogance of those who work to bring about the future they've already seen. The unpleasantness that comes when they try to make that future real. Hilde, this may disappoint you, but I don't feel that unpleasantness from Shei. I don't feel..."

Tyrkanzyaka paused to choose her words.

"Really? There were definitely moments she acted like she knew everything, weren't there?"

"...I won't deny that. There were times I wanted to give her a good smack. Even so, I never felt that revolting arrogance from her."

Tyr was reaching for whatever good memories she could find, and Hilde pressed again.

"Truly? She knows the future clear as day, and she has the Celestial God's treasures too. Skywarbler, Rene's pouch, who else could have those but someone connected to the Sanctum?"

"Isn't she trying to go against the future, though? What I feel from Shei first and foremost isn't a prophet's arrogance, it's that will. What she is matters less than what she did in front of me and what she intends to do going forward."

Relief spread through Shei from her fingertips outward. What she had built up until now hadn't been for nothing. She had made the effort, and Tyrkanzyaka had come to trust her.

It made sense. At the edge of the End, Shei had run herself ragged bridging light and shadow both. Especially after rescuing the Healer Sage and working alongside her, she had even reached out to vampires she had once thought of only as enemies, and helped them. If the bond formed then was worth anything, it should have been enough for this....

...But when exactly had that bond formed. Just as Shei began to turn it over in her mind, Tyrkanzyaka smiled gently and spoke.

"So. Tell me one thing only. Tell me that, and I will stay by your side."

However gentle her smile, she was still the Progenitor, Tyrkanzyaka. The Sanctum's greatest adversary. The Shadow Queen. She had lived a thousand years that way, and a short time spent with Shei and Hughes would not change what she was at her core.

As she herself had said, the sea is still. The blood sea does not get swept up in momentary storms. A few days with Shei would not change her nature.

"Shei. When I march in blood against the Sanctum, help me take the Holy Maiden's head."

At the chilling proposal, Shei hesitated for a moment. Tyrkanzyaka pretended not to notice and continued softly.

"I'm not asking you to carry everything. I don't want to burden you that much. But even one, just one will do. Do you have that will in you?"

Shei understood instinctively. This was a test, or rather, an opportunity. A last chance to lie and say she was on their side.

Nodding here wouldn't mean attacking the Holy Maiden right away. How long would it even take for Tyrkanzyaka and the Holy Maiden to actually face each other? It might never happen at all before the King of Sin appeared.

There was a way out of this right now. She only had to nod, or at least take the vampires' side for this one cycle.

But. Shei's mouth moved on its own.

"I can't."

The line of Tyrkanzyaka's lips slowly hardened like dried blood, but there was nothing to be done about it.

A lie could get her out of this right now. But the Sanctum had helped Shei many times over. Having received their help and grown fond of them, she had no intention of leaving them out of the future she was trying to reach.

"I'm going to stop the End that's coming. The Sanctum and the Holy Maidens are my greatest allies. I don't think I can do it without their help, and I don't want to."

Honesty wasn't exactly a virtue. A sweet lie might have brought better results.

But Shei couldn't help being honest. She wasn't skilled enough to show a different face to everyone across every cycle and still hold herself together inside.

Tyrkanzyaka had known that, and was asking precisely because she knew.

It was going exactly as Hilde had designed. She must have understood from the start. Given both their personalities, there was an inevitable... mismatch.

"Is that so..."

Tyrkanzyaka breathed a quiet lament. A small sigh, and with it she cut away a thread of feeling.

It wasn't that she felt nothing, but this was something she had done countless times across a thousand years of living. Not with resolve, just with habit.

Snap. And the feeling was done. Tyrkanzyaka met Shei's eyes with a calm, still gaze.

"So this is where we part. It was quite enjoyable."

She turned to walk away, shaking off the warmth like dust. Shei spoke quickly.

"Wait. Just wait. When the End comes, that's over too!"

"Is that not also a prophecy. So long as you have no will to abandon your prophecy, the prophecy will remain bound to you and keep repeating. I say this in earnest."

"No, it's real! The King of Sin will kill everything! You, me, even Hughes! And you're fine with that...!"

That was the moment. Tyrkanzyaka turned a sharp gaze on Shei, and black energy poured out like a waterfall. Shei raised her arm and shielded her face.

It wasn't exactly a threat, but the rejection in it was unmistakable. Tyrkanzyaka stood still and warned Shei in a low voice.

"Do not put Hyu's name in your mouth. A moment ago, you abandoned him by your own choice."

"What are you talking about? I haven't abandoned him at all! He's not even a vampire."

"No. You wouldn't know. But you did."

"What do you mean by that!"

Shei didn't know Hughes was the King of Humanity. It was already something of an open secret, but Tyrkanzyaka had no particular desire to tell her.

Tyrkanzyaka had fought the Sanctum directly herself, so she believed in the existence of prophecy. What she didn't believe was its content. The prophecy itself might be true, but that didn't mean the ones delivering it would tell only the truth.

She had trusted Shei as a person because Shei had acted consistently, nothing more. Shei's words existed as words, not as truth. Tyrkanzyaka had drawn a clear line between the two and entered this journey with that understanding.

And over the course of that journey, there was something new Tyrkanzyaka had come to learn.

The King of Sin Shei was trying to stop might be the King of Humanity. And Hughes was probably the King of Humanity.

In the distant past, five lords who killed the King of Humanity and divided his power among themselves. If that legend was real, then perhaps what they called the King of Sin was slander, or perhaps the Sanctum was simply afraid of the king's return.

If Shei was entangled with the Sanctum in any way at all, then keeping her away was the only path for Hughes, like it or not. If Shei were to try to kill Hughes in advance, Tyrkanzyaka would have no way to save him unless she turned him into a vampire. Added to her hatred of the Sanctum, to protect someone precious to her, Tyrkanzyaka borrowed the same mocking tone she used with prophets.

"Why not use those grand powers of foresight to find out."

"It's not foresight...! Fine. I'll just go talk to him myself! Where is Hughes?"

If anyone could fix this, it was him. That easy grin, settling everything down for everyone. Shei spoke his name with a thin thread of hope still in her voice.

Tyrkanzyaka swept her parasol in a furious arc. Like black ink swallowing the world, a rush of darkness surged along the stroke. This time it was clearly an attack with intent to harm. Shei had no choice but to meet it, swinging Skywarbler in return. Skywarbler, which had drunk down lightning, tore through the darkness and cracked with thunder.

Through the scattering dark and the rolling peal, Tyr's voice reached her.

"If you truly mean to abandon us and follow the Sanctum."

"I never said that...!"

Even as Shei answered back, a pale hand reached for her. Tyrkanzyaka's hand. Far faster than Shei had anticipated.

Since reclaiming her heart, she could no longer extend her bloodcraft outward. Instead it was as though she had channeled all that power entirely into her energy, gaining a monstrous physical strength in its place. Getting caught in that grip would be dangerous, Shei felt it in her bones, and she reflexively shot out her other hand.

Jizan. The sword without recoil. The relic of a grandmaster that none without the right could lift. She used Jizan to lightly deflect the oncoming hand. Just that, and yet a heavy thud ran up through her arm.

Shei dropped low, and from the darkness above her, two crimson eyes gleamed red. The Progenitor, Tyrkanzyaka, was looking down at her.

With open hostility.

"I will carve into your body what it means to be my enemy."

She had faced this opponent once before. Back then Tyrkanzyaka had been under Finlay's control, but even so, that power had been thoroughly miserable to deal with. The Black Knights she commanded were effectively limitless. An attrition war pressed with near-infinite resources, and even reaching the body itself left no clear way to harm it.

That time she had been moving under the control of a lower-grade vampire, and Hughes had been the one to think of electric shock as the answer, so she had come back to herself without much trouble. But now, with her full will intact, and her true body dangerous enough on top of that.

Still.

"...Go right ahead!"

She had Skywarbler, Jizan, and the Sky God's power, all of them made for facing opponents like this. Shei swung Jizan in a wide arc and knocked Tyrkanzyaka's arm away. No matter how strong, even she could not resist the earth itself. As Tyrkanzyaka was flung back, Shei shouted with all the frustration she had been holding.

"Stop being so stubborn! I need all of you! You, the Sanctum, Azzy, Hughes! Without that, no one survives what comes next!"

"One has only two hands. To take hold of something more, one must first let go of what one already holds. That is the way of the world."

"What kind of way is that for a ruined world! If we don't force it all together, it's over!"

"Then call it my selfishness. I am possessive by nature, and I have no wish to share with others."

The words were aimed at Shei as mockery, but the image that flashed through Tyrkanzyaka's mind in that moment was Hughes, talking with Shei without any wall between them. She hadn't let it show, but she had always known instinctively that he kept his eye on Shei. Until now she had thought both of them were men, but with Shei revealed to be a woman....

"Let us have an ugly fight over something petty, then."

Tyrkanzyaka put a little truth into the words and planted her foot, hard, pressing down with force.

There is a technique called True Stance. The instant the foot lands, one drives energy into the ground, delivering the impact across the earth itself. Without exceptional control, the foot merely sinks into the ground, or the sole bursts from the energy rebounding inward.

But Tyrkanzyaka managed it through a method no one would have thought to try.

An impact too great to withstand, and the sole of her foot burst open for an instant, truly just an instant. The absolute dominion over all her blood that Tyrkanzyaka's true blood carried brought it back into place as though nothing had happened.

But even that instant was enough.

Enough to spread the impact across the entire Lightning Rod Tower.

Even for a Lightning Rod Tower that could shrug off lightning without effort, the Progenitor's blood-force was too much, too violent. A deep, groaning shudder. Under the weight of the blood sea, the Lightning Rod Tower began to tilt.

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